Psalm 126
My NASB phone Bible labeled Psalm 126, “Thanksgiving for Return from Captivity”. The most obvious reference to a return from captivity is when the Israelites were released from their Babylonian Exile, sometime around 500 BC. As they returned to Jerusalem they would find that the Temple had been destroyed, likely not one stone standing on another. What a loss that would have been to the few who remembered it so well. They still had the site of the Temple, the “Temple Mount”, but not the Temple itself. However, their approach to Jerusalem would not have changed. Jerusalem was, itself, a city on a hill: Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah… (II Chronicles 3:1). Mount Moriah was the hill where Abraham went to offer his son Isaac. (Genesis 22) So their joy would have been strong as they approached the city.
I was thinking of our own returns from captivity. The closest that I can relate to that is my appointment to EKU after five years in a government non-teaching job at USDA in Washington, DC. It had not been “captivity”, but it had also not been fun! I attend Freedom Road on Thursday afternoons. I daresay some of the folks there can relate deliverance from alcoholism or other addictions to freedom from captivity! But the most prominent return from captivity to which I can relate is when Carol and I were working with refugees from Kosovo in 1999. One six-person family had waited in a refugee camp for six months before being approved to come to Kentucky. They still celebrate November XX as their personal independence day. Another relative family, the Maliqi’s had earlier come to Kentucky in July 1999 and were waiting for them when they arrived. The later story of the Maliqi family is an even stronger “return from captivity”. I’ll share that story when we gather as an RTB group this Sunday after coffee hour.